Technological Change and the Value of Skills
We study how technological change reshapes the value of skills, how workers and firms adapt, and which skills matter most for wages, productivity, and long-term career outcomes.
New technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), robots, and other innovations, have the potential to fundamentally transform the tasks people perform at work and, with it, the economic value of different skills.
Technological change is transforming the tasks people perform at work and the economic value of different skills. This research area studies how new technologies, including automation and artificial intelligence, reshape skill demands, wages, and career trajectories across workers, firms, regions, and occupations. A central focus is on understanding which skills generate economic value, how combining different skills matters, how these patterns change as technologies diffuse, and how to (re)train the workforce for the future of work..
Drawing on large-scale administrative data, job postings, employer-employee matched data, training curricula, and field experiments, we examine how skills are developed through vocational training and how firms adjust their skill demands in response to technological change. Recent work also explores how skills-based hiring practices can expand access to opportunity by shifting employer focus away from formal credentials and toward demonstrated abilities. In parallel, research on training and automation shows that proactive skill investment by firms can mitigate automation risks and lead to broad-based wage gains
By linking detailed skill measures to wages, productivity, and firm performance, this work provides new evidence on how technological change impacts inequality, mobility, and the returns to human capital, offering insights for workers, firms, and policymakers navigating the future of work.
Featured DEL Researchers
Sebastian Steffen
Digital Fellow
Sebastian studies the future of work, human capital, and the organizational implications of digital transformation. His research combines large-scale data with modern econometric and AI methods to examine how firms adapt to technological change and how workers’ technology skills evolve. He shows that digital capabilities, such as remote-work systems, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity, shape firms’ resilience to shocks and complement human capital. He also develops new text-based measures of digital skills and IT capabilities to address persistent gaps in how technology is captured in economic data. A further line of his work analyzes the diffusion and obsolescence of skills in the digital economy, highlighting which workers face the greatest adjustment pressures. Sebastian teaches data analytics and data management at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, where he emphasizes statistical reasoning, computational literacy, and applied research design. Sebastian received a PhD in Management Science from the Information Technology group at MIT Sloan and a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University.
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Christina Langer
Postdoctoral Fellow
Christina is a Postdoc at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, where she studies how technology reshapes work, skills, and the decisions firms make. She also holds affiliations as a Honorary Research Fellow at the UCL School of Management and as a Guest Researcher at the ifo Institute in Munich.
She has worked with large datasets ranging from apprenticeship curricula she collected herself to administrative records and millions of online job postings, and she also conducts field experiments. Her work examines how skills evolve, how hiring changes, and what happens when new technologies like AI enter the workplace.
Erik Brynjolfsson
Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor
Erik Brynjolfsson is one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of technology and artificial intelligence. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles.
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Firm Training, Automation, and Wages: International Worker-Level Evidence
Learning Occupational Task-Shares Dynamics for the Future of Work
Skills and tasks demand forecasting
